


Tiny touches and telephones

by i_gaze_at_scully



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s03e17 Pusher
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-10-09 05:09:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17400629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_gaze_at_scully/pseuds/i_gaze_at_scully





	Tiny touches and telephones

It’s been an hour at the phone booth stakeout when her head lolls onto his shoulder. Scully slips in and out of a loose sort of consciousness, but jerks awake as her cheek meets his shoulder bone. 

“I’m up,” she insists, though he hadn’t accused her of anything to contrary. Mulder cracks a smile and pats his shoulder in invitation. Scully shakes her head almost imperceptibly.

“Really, I don’t mind,” he says, and she purses her lips indecisively for a moment before the weight of her eyelids threatens to take hold again. 

“Thanks,” she mumbles, and lets herself settle in against the soft fabric of his suit and his firm arm underneath. 

A feather light, barely there touch to her cheek pulls her out of her light sleep and she startles. There’s a warmth in his smile and a lightness in his voice that half convinces her she’s still dreaming. 

In the cold, she can see her breath dissolve against his chest while they huddle around the payphone together. She strains on her tiptoes to share the phone with him, strains to connect golf and murder. He bends closer to her to help, and she unconsciously wraps her hand around his on the receiver. 

“Let’s go, G-Woman,” he says when they hang up. She lets the adrenaline and his grin warm her as they run back to the car.

—

She feels cloudy somehow, this whole case. She stares with her mouth agape or her eyes unfocused, latches onto only bits and pieces. There’s something leaving her unsettled, and she can’t quite pinpoint it. 

“I have to agree with Agent Mulder, sir,” she admits to Skinner in a small voice. “I can’t even begin to explain how, but I think that Modell is responsible for your injuries.” And she means it. Somehow, in her haze, in light of all she’s seen, she suspends disbelief long enough to take Modell seriously. She catches Mulder with his jaw on the floor at her statement as the three of them finish talking in the hall. 

When they walk away, he places his hand on the small of her back and whispers  _thank you._  With the other hand, he dials S.W.A.T.

—

His hand is on her knee in Fairfax Mercy Hospital and her heart is in her stomach. She has no argument, nothing to stop him from putting himself in so,  _so_  much danger. She tries to fight the fog but words won’t come. His eyes are wide, his mouth a hard, strong line. She places her hand over his, and then he’s gone.

Shots are fired and she’s crazed. She can’t take it anymore, can’t shake the sense of doom lingering at the back of her throat like a bitter pill. 

“Mulder just get out of there,” she begs. “Go.” He doesn’t have the chance.

“ _Mulder! God!”_

—

Slowly she walks down the hall, steadying her breath. Small, unsure steps. Her hand twitches at her side without her weapon. When she opens the door and takes in the scene, she knows better than to reach for the gun sitting right there, right there on the table. She could snatch it, but she wouldn’t make it out the door. So she sits, lips parted, hardly breathing, dizzy with dread. Her words are useless, and when Mulder fires the first blank, it is deafening.

Something cracks, breaks wide open when, in the middle of her futile sentence, Mulder brings the gun to his temple and pulls the trigger in one fluid motion. The world stops, the universe implodes, the fog lifts and she is on her feet screaming before she knows it. “ _No! Damn you, you bastard!”_

It all would have ended in that millisecond and she would have watched as it happened. Her partner’s blood on the walls, on her shirt, her face. Mulder’s blood on her hands. She needs to stop it she needs to get the gun she needs to–

His hand grips her arm like a vice when she reaches towards him. She chokes on the end of her word at the roughness of it, the desperation. He clenches his jaw and squeezes her arm till it hurts, then releases. When he points the gun at her, she hears the first sound he’s made this whole time: a small, pained grunt. 

Where there was lifelessness in his eyes before there is now a deep, horrified fear. He tells her to run, tells her with his mouth what she had already seen in his eyes and she knows she has to go, go  _now_ , but she can’t look away. As he battles for control, her name is on his lips, barely there, sputtered. She somehow she breaks eye contact and runs. Her eyes slam closed on instinct when the shot rings out, fear gripping her heart like a vice. 

 _Click, click, click_. 

The chamber is empty. Mulder fires on anyway. Scully watches Modell bleed.

—

He doesn’t blink once while he tells her about Modell refusing treatment. There is nothing in his expression, his voice. She takes his hand to be sure the blood still thrums in his veins, assure herself he is alive. Her fingers wrap around his and when she finds them still, it is suddenly all too much. When she turns and they break contact, she blinks back tears.

—

She cries on her couch. She is far past numb, finally, this fugue of a case now crashed and burned into stark reality. She sobs freely and hugs a pillow to her chest. It is not enough.

It’s past one in the morning when she calls; he answers on the first ring, but doesn’t say a word. They breathe together in silence. 

“Are you okay?” She eventually asks, hoarse and sniffly. He chuffs on the other end and she almost smiles. Almost. 

“Scully, I…” He trails off, but she latches onto the way her name sounded this time, free of panic.

“Come over,” she says, neither a demand nor a question.It’s too long, his silence, and a sob nearly overcomes her, but she bites it back. She covers the receiver when a small whimper slips through. She just needs to  _feel_ him, she needs her head on his shoulder or his hand on her knee or any real, solid part of him that she can touch and see and  _feel._ God she almost lost him, she needs–

“Okay,” he agrees. She inhales shakily and nods to herself, tugs the pillow close under her chin.

Pretenses fly out the window when she throws the door open. She wraps her arms around his torso, breathes him in, and lets out a shaky sigh of relief. His hands come to rest loosely on her back at first, but then he breaks too. He pulls her in by the back of her head, crushing her to him, hopelessly knotting his fingers in her hair. They breathe together again, but this time, chest to chest and tear-stained face to tear-stained face, it is enough. 


End file.
